Ninkilim/Ningilim?

[rynathee]

Hey everyone,

One question I've had in the back of my mind is in regards to rats and/or rodents. Did these creatures have any sort of significance that we know of? Just recently learned about Ninkilim/Ningilim, who was "Lord Rodent"? Anyone have any further information to share on this deity?

Cheers!
*Ryn*

[us4-he2-gal2]

Hello Rynathee:

Yes, Ninkilim certainly has something to do with rodents. Usually, the deity is indicated as being female, with occasional exceptions. I think she is mainly attested in materials from the Old Babylonian period and later. The deity is discussed in the massive Assyriological encyclodpedic series known as RlA "Reallexikon der Assyriologie" which contains entries mostly in German, occasionally in English, and is some 12 volumes long currently (they are still working on the series, the volumes covering the final letters t through z are not yet complete). Anyway, Ninkilim is discussed in the entry "Mungo" which is German for mongoose. Because, as far as is known, she was the mongoose goddess and she was relied on to assist with magic rituals some of which addressed the problem of rodents in the fields.


The mongoose is of course famous for its ability to kill snakes, although it also kills rodents. There was an early incantation goddess named Ningirim (or Ningirimma) who had a prominent role in the incantation texts from the Early Dynastic period, the earliest written incantations in the world. She seems to have been the early patron of magic, many incantations from this period ended with the phrase 'it is the incantation of Ningirim'; this is a sort of divine legitimation, wherein the incantation specialist attributes the spell to the divine and connects it with that divine power. Ningirim seems to have lost importance by the end of the 3rd millennium, by 2000 or so, and is mentioned less frequently in the texts. Some scholars have suggested that Ninkilim is a later form of Ningirim based on certain similarities - involvement with incantations, similar name (Ningirim is phonetically very similar to Ninkilim), and an association with the place Murum. But one could instead emphasize their differences in order to make the opposite argument, so it isn't clear (see Krebernik RlA - Ningirim). Snakes were the most common attacking agent in the early incantations, the incantations were intended to counteract this danger (in later periods, demons become the more common enemy mentioned in existing tablets found so far). So it would make a sort of sense in Ningirim, invoked early on to counteract snakes, became Ninkilim, the mongoose goddess, as some point. But that's still speculation. Without proof, we have to discuss them as distinct deities.


I've posted at various times about Ningirim here on enenuru and the search will find those instances. Also, about the occurrences of her name in early incantation texts, I wrote a paper about that in my undergrad days: www.academia.edu/5572755/It_is_the_Incantation_of_Ningirima_Theistic_Force_in_the_Early_Mesopotamian_Magical_Tradition



As for Ninkilim, the Sumerian word for rodent is gilim (or kilim depending on the phonetic realization). The ancients didn't separate species of animals scientifically, so the word ur may refer to a lion or a dog. A gilim/kilim may be a rodent but a ninkilim 'lord rodent' is a mongoose. With the dingir before the word, ^dNinkilim, it would indicate the mongoose goddess. Some of the best insight into the role of the goddess comes from texts known as the 'Farmer's Instructions' published, but not translated, in M. Civil 1994 “The Farmer’s Instructions – A Sumerian Agricultural Manual.” Acta Orientalis Supplementa 5: 1-239. Part of these instructions appear to have included the performance of religious rites at various stages of the growth of barley plants. These religious rites were to ward off rodents, among other things. Nin-kilim is named in connection with the so called sizkur-rites, which probably included magic rituals and incantations to ward off rodents and birds that threatened the crop. However, besides the fact that these rites are named in the Farmer's Instructions, and existed, we don't know anything further about them as no texts detailing the rites have yet been recovered (if they were written in the first place). Its clear that rodents were a problem in the fields, no doubt, they were a problem in the cities as well.

[rynathee]

Hi Bill,

Thanks for your reply, this is great information! Another rabbit hole for me to explore. I appreciate the link to your paper. I'm about half way through and have thoroughly enjoyed it thus far. I'll post more after I've done some additional reading - so many informative posts found within enenuru! In the meantime, I have another question. You said that demons become the more common enemy mentioned within incantation tablets in the later periods, as opposed to snakes in earlier incantations. Does this mean that in general the earlier incantations primarily protected against natural forces/creatures and that over time this focus shifted to supernatural forces (demons,witches,etc.)?

Thanks again!

[us4-he2-gal2]

Rynathee:




Yes, good question. My impression of much of this hinges on Graham Cunningham's 1996 work Deliver Me From Evil: Mesopotamian Incantations 2600-1600 which was a very useful guide and survey of this genre of text (I have mentioned it probably 1,000 times on the board by now). While he does not provide much in terms of text translation, he does summarize the characteristics and developments of the incantations in each successive period, Early Dynastic, Sargonic, Ur III, Old Babylonian. The most useful comment on this particular question, the conceptualization of illness (as it were), supernatural vs. natural forces, comes from Mark Geller in his review of Cunningham's book, in which he states:



"The book spends little time discussing the types of demons which can be found in this literature, which is an important feature distinguishing earlier from later incantations. It is only the Old Babylonian period which sees the characteristic itemizing of various types of demons in a standard list, e. g. udug hul a-lá hul gedim hul gal5-lá hul dingir hul maškim hul // utukku lemnu alû lemnu eṭimmu lemnu gallû lemnu ilu lemnu rãbiṣu lemnu, a list which was to be copied during the rest of the history of bilingual incantations. In the third millennium, by contrast, the demons are rather scarce and never listed. One usually sees as the 'problem' a snake or scorpion, or difficulty in childbirth, or simply demons not mentioned by name; even the udug demon is relatively rare. The pattern of so few demons appearing in early incantations is unlikely to be coincidental."

enenuru.proboards.com/thread/72/early-dynastic-incantations

As I report on the Early Dynastic Incantation thread above, the corpus of Early Dynastic incantations (from around 2600 BC) are about 50 in number, with a further 26 added recently in a publication by Andrew George (George 2016, CUSAS 32). Unfortunately, only some 8 or so of the ED incantations he publishes are given in translation (perhaps due to the extreme difficulty of the genre). The ED incantations come from fairly localized sources, mainly Fara and Ebla (Ebla being quite outside Mesopotamia proper, but shares the same literary tradition). There is no running theory at present as to why snake and scorpion i.e natural enemies are frequent (or more frequent) than supernatural enemies in the earliest texts. There are a few possible reasons for this lack of progress in the field a) it is hard to explain b) 50-75 texts is not a large corpus to base a good theory off of c) there are only a handful of experts who investigate ED incantation texts at all (in the world). One thing to note is that while general notions about disease causing agents seem quite consistent in the pre-scientific world, emphasis one or another type of culprit seems to change from century to century or millennium to millennium. Witches evolved into a major target of exorcistic magic in 1st millennium Mesopotamian for example, but were only minimally featured in 2nd millennium incantations and not at all in 3rd millennium incantations.



Geller states that the udug demon is mentioned in some ED incantations (if rarely). For more information on this demon, see the below thread:

enenuru.proboards.com/thread/607/faceless-udug-demon